Posted on 04/25/2003 4:23:53 PM PDT by hotpotato
SACRAMENTO — With no votes to spare, the Assembly passed a bill Monday to make it illegal for landlords and employers to discriminate against people who have changed their gender or whose gender is not exclusively male or female.
AB 196 by Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) passed after a lengthy debate in which Democrats argued that the bill was about basic civil rights, and Republicans attacked it as a "job-killer" that would drive California employers out of state.
If the bill passes the Senate as expected and is signed by the governor, it will make California the fourth state in the nation to ban discrimination against transgender people. Minnesota, Rhode Island and New Mexico have already done so, and more than a dozen local governments in California have passed ordinances with similar objectives.
Gov. Gray Davis has not taken a position on the bill, said spokesman Russ Lopez.
Leno's legislation would amend the state Fair Employment and Housing Act, which already bans discrimination based on a person's religion, race, ancestry, sex and sexual orientation, among other attributes. Leno would expand that list to include "gender."
His bill uses the definition of gender in the state education and penal codes, where gender is described as a person's identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person's sex at birth.
Leno's bill, which he said would affect more than 100,000 Californians, allows employers to set standards of appearance, grooming and dress, as long as a worker is allowed to dress consistently with his or her preferred gender.
The Department of Fair Employment and Housing can issue a wide range of penalties for violations.
Punishments range from restoration of back pay and promotions to damages and civil fines of as much as $10,000 for housing discrimination and $150,000 for job discrimination.
Supporters said that discrimination against those who do not dress and behave like the male or female they were born as is a widespread and serious problem.
"Across California, people are fired, denied promotions, denied adequate housing because of gender discrimination," said Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood)."Unemployment rates are egregiously high among transgender people due to workplace discrimination. Estimates run as high as 70% unemployment. As a result, many transgender people wind up homeless."
But Republicans called the bill an unfair burden on employers, especially those who may be morally opposed to transgender behavior.
Assemblyman Rick Keene, (R-Chico), argued that Leno's legislation would prevent a business owner from controlling the image projected by his or her business.
"Everyone would feel that individuals ought to have the right to dress the way they feel is appropriate on their own time," Keene said, "but we have also guarded the right for businesses to decide what kind of images they want to put forwardThis would fly in the face of that."
The bill passed 41 to 34, with five Assembly members not voting. It failed to win all 48 Democratic votes in the 80-member lower house of the Legislature.
Fourteen members rose to speak about the bill, including Assemblyman John Longville (D-Rialto). He compared the bill with the civil rights legislation of the 1960s to ban discrimination against people based on skin color.
"Think about how you're going to explain your vote two or three decades down the road to your grandchildren," Longville warned Republicans.
Assemblyman Tony Strickland (R-Moorpark) said he would easily explain his no vote to grandchildren as a rejection of the state's attempt to impose its views on employers and landlords.
AB 196 is the first bill backed by the Assembly's new five-member Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus to clear the Assembly.
The case (she lost, see next)
Crossing lines Court upholds the "right" of a transgendered teacher to use women's restroom.
For those who aren't familiar with crossdressing, it is a fetish and entering women's private domains (restrooms, gym dressing areas) provides sexual gratification (voyeurism). The public is not being educated on this and as a matter of fact, most of those writing this legislation are ignorant about the issue of transgenderism and are too afraid to oppose legislation which will likely result in harassment from the transgendered and gay communities. Women/girls are assaulted, raped and sometimes killed in public restrooms by male assailants because these places provide out-of-the-way access to vulnerable females. If this bill passes, women/girls will be forced to share women's restrooms with heterosexual men dressed as women in public, at work, school, gyms etc. Women/girls are often at their most vulnerable in restrooms and many sexual predators know this.
Once the cat is out of the bag, it's impossible to put it back. I think the transgendered should be able to find jobs but I don't think their sexual gratification should come at the expense of the safety and privacy of the public including children. Separate restrooms/gym facilities should be required before this legislation is passed.
If my requirement is that the successful employment candidate be bilingual, English and Spanish, and I do not hire the person standing in front of me because it doesn't speak Spanish, I've got a claim that I didn't hire it because of it's special condition. Same with a landlord. If a freak drives up in a really, really loud car, speakers and exhaust, and wants to rent my house in a very quiet neighborhood, and I turn it down....
Why is it OK to accept that a person born as a member of one gender can "change," but faggitude is immutable? Thus, I can change a male to a female with some surgery, but it is impossible to change a fairy into a male.
More California extremist foolishness to turn the society to garbage.
It's more ridiculous than that. Legislated rights for crossdressers/transgendered imposed upon employers is state supported public sexual gratification or state supported fetish forced on the public.
I suppose it's fair if indelicate to call them freaks. I was raised a different way.
Intersexed (damaged XX or XY chromosomes) is a rare condition and can be tested and rarely accounts for transgenderism/transexualism.
No one is all male or all female.
This is a red herring.
Please don't confuse transexuallity with cross-dressing. The former is a serious medical and psycholgical concern, the latter a harmless neurosis at worst.
Transgendered individuals intermix the terms all the time as well as conduct their own arena of validating/invalidating different versions of transgenderism (elitism). Very little of what is being floated around in the transgendered community as "scientific fact and explanation" is supported by empirical data and most is downright phoney - the goal being acceptance by the public and sometimes their own selves.
The deal that the Pubbies made with the devil in 1998 has created a series of "superdistricts" that don't reflect California's overall balance and were created as a haven for ideologs.
An ideolog is enough trouble under the pressure of reelction but put him in a "superdistrict" and limit his term and now you got a wacko that has nothing to loose and will introduce this type of nonsense legislation every 20 minutes during his last term in office.
It is not always harmless. It destroys many families and now is being forced on the public in a way that will, at the least, intrude on the privacy of others and at worst, create an unsafe atmosphere for many by demanding access to private areas which have been traditionally maintained as separate for issues of safety as well as privacy.
Check this one out. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/903490/posts
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